Journalists and popular news sources have often liked to attribute recent changes in
Japanese foreign and security policy to the nationalistic personal ideology of Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe. On the other hand, many scholars have focused on the role of
external factors, such as the rise of China. Placed within such debates, this paper seeks to
draw connections between the two sides by exploring the answer to the hypothetical
question of what would have happened had Abe stayed in power during his first
administration instead of resigning in September, 2007.
This paper places Abe’s policies within the context of historical political trends, the
external environment that Japan faces, and the administrations in the years between
Abe’s first and second time in office. The findings support the argument that a realism
response to an increasingly serious security environment primarily explains Japan’s
current policy trajectory. At the same time, we can still conclude that the changes in
policy we see today are likely to have happened earlier had Abe remained in office in
2007. This is not because Abe’s ideology would have driven the policy changes. It is
instead because there was a stagnation in policy during the in between years as a result of
a high turnover rate of prime ministers and vacillating policy positions. By staying in
office, however, Abe would have provided political stability and prevented such
stagnation from occurring.
Such findings suggest that Abe will only be able to advance his own personal ideologies
in so far as they are consistent with the demands of realism. The findings also highlight
the importance of taking domestic politics into account when thinking about foreign
policy, for a mismatch between the ideologies of the leadership and the dominant IR
theory guiding international relations may create a time lag between expected policy and
actual policy.